Leading UK legal professionals have issued warnings about a political “race to the bottom”, after a Conservative MP seen as a potential leadership candidate suggested that large numbers of legally settled families must be deported.
Controversial Statement on Legal Status
The MP, a opposition home affairs spokesperson and a Tory whip, stated that individuals with legal status in the UK should have their right to stay cancelled, to ensure the UK remains predominantly “culturally uniform”. The Conservative leader, the party head, later retreated from Lam’s statement last Thursday.
While the leader initially said the statement were “generally consistent” with official stance, she later returned to existing policy that only revoke permanent residency status if someone has broken the law. Nevertheless, the statement has sparked concern for many as a indication of “dangerous times” and belonging to a larger political discourse.
Escalating Pattern of Immigration Criticism
In the past few months, politicians across political parties have adopted anti-immigration language and repeated policies that were once considered fringe. Lately, a political party leader complained about “numerous advertisements” seemingly featuring “black and Asian people”, and in September, the group’s head, Nigel Farage, pledged to eliminate the main route for immigration to obtain British citizenship.
Earlier this year, the Labour leader said the UK faced the danger of becoming an “nation of foreigners” without tougher immigration policies.
“I don’t accept that the ramifications of that statement were not comprehended, and it was appealing to a specific group,” said a leading barrister, who has investigated claims of discrimination within the opposition party.
The barrister, whose family migrated from the Caribbean, said Lam’s comments were a “thinly disguised racial purity campaign”. The legal expert said the current political discourse was an “absolute indictment” that someone like himself, from multiple generations of people who had contributed to the country, should still feel insecure.
“We’re in a downward spiral,” continued Forde. “It’s desperate to see Labour feeling the sole solution to the rival party is to try and out-Reform Reform, rather than actually discuss the positives of immigration.
“The language has to evolve and has to be accurate.”
Public Sentiment and Far-Right Activity
Backing for the party has increased in the polls, and extremist demonstrations have attracted large crowds to London, leaving many minority ethnic Britons feeling the circumstances are reminiscent of extremist rallies from decades past and fearful the UK is “regressing” as politicians focus on migrants.
“These are perilous times,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, who has acted for hundreds of victims at the centre of the Windrush scandal, in which UK citizens from the former empire residing in the UK legally were mistakenly categorized as unauthorized immigrants.
The lawyer said her father, who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica in 1951, would be rolling in his grave over the present debate. Lately, her daughter has asked whether they should get overseas citizenship.
“Now we’re getting kids in their 20s and 30s who have got multiple generations ahead of them, UK-born, feeling less than,” said McKenzie.
“These are extremely hazardous times where anti-immigrant fervour is being seen as a legitimate policy orientation for most political parties,” she added. “The principles here, the tentacles of it extend widely when you start talking about removing and removing people who are legally in the country, and millions of them as well. This represents a major shift, isn’t it?”
Individual Consequences
Individuals with permanent residency, or with spouses who hold this status, have shared that the new proposals floated by Conservative and Reform leaders have left them feeling uncertain in the UK, and described the broader political anti-migrant discourse as discriminatory, alarming and unwelcoming.
One individual, a dual British-Jordanian citizen residing in the city with his wife and children, said the growing support of Reform in the polls had pushed him to get his UK passport. For the past six years he has gone through the process of securing ILR – at a significant expense – after moving to the UK on a marriage permit. Should the suggested changes be enacted, he fears his family would be separated.
“It’s easy for someone to say now, well, that will not occur,” said Darwazeh, in his thirties. “Who knows how this unfolds in two, three years.”
While day to day, he has “no issues”, he has been alarmed by the proliferation of national symbols in his neighbourhood, a trend that has been widely co-opted by the far-right and immigration opponents. Long-term, though the family has no wish to leave, they may think about it if the hostility persists.
“It’s strange that in a nation where migrants are required, nobody is promoting a positive story about immigration at all,” he remarked. “I just find the vilification very odd and terrifying, long-term.”
